On the Journey, May: Joy

The May issue of "On the Journey" has arrived! HERE

We'll be exploring JOY. Don't miss it, and don't miss your Journey Group meeting to get together to work with this issue!

This month's the spiritual exercise is making a list. Be sure to look at that exercise and bring your list with you to your Journey Group.

Five excellent TED talks are listed. You'll want to see them!

Questions, p. 9:

1. What is joy? What is its relationship to happiness? What feelings and images come to mind
when you think of the word “joy”?
2. What, in your life now, gives you joy?
3. What brought you joy when you were a child? Is that source of joy gone? Has it evolved?
4. What is the relationship between joy and sorrow?
5. What will be your legacy of joy to the generations that follow yours?
6. What regular habits and practices might create more joyfulness in your heart, home and
community?
7. How much joy do you really want? If you could choose what percentage of your waking
hours for the next four weeks will be filled with ecstatic bliss, what would you choose? What are you
doing to bring your experience closer to the percentage you chose?
8. Think of some moments when you felt most alive. Does there seem to be a connection
between aliveness and joy?
9. If 50% of your happiness comes from your genetic “set point,” how cheerful by nature would
you say you are? If 10% of your happiness comes from circumstances, how do your circumstances rate
these days? If 40% of your happiness comes from what you do and think, how are you doing in this
area?
10. How do you experience the connection between creativity and joy?
11. Kahlil Gibran says, “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked....The deeper that sorrow carves
into your being, the more joy you can contain.” How do you experience the connection
between joy and sorrow? Some say that your openness to (capacity to take in and not push
away) joy is equal to your openness to grief or pain. Does this seem true?
12. Is joy for you a solitary or communal experience?

The link to the current and all past issues of On the Journey can always be found at cucmatters.org/p/journey-groups.htm

On the Journey: Desire

The Feb issue of On the Journey has arrived! HERE

This month, UU Journey Groups will be exploring DESIRE. Don't miss it, and don't miss your Journey Group meeting to get together to work with this theme!

The Feb issue of On the Journey features

• poems from a child, a teen, a young adult, Sinclair Shafer, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Bhartrihari
• a quotations page of 27 provocative, witty, or trenchant remarks
• Epictetus on Disciplining Desire
• A Buddhist perspective on Aspirations vs. Cravings
• Meredith's column: "Desire: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly"
• An article on addressing our addictive behaviors
• 10 suggested TED talks
• a page of intriguing questions
• a spiritual exercise for the month

The Questions Page. Select one or two questions about which to share your thoughts or musings with your Journey Group.

1. Is life calling you to nurture someone else’s desire? How can you help another lean in to the hungers and hopes budding inside them?
2. What about the desire to be true to yourself? We so often get lost trying to meet other people’s desires that we forget our own.
3. When was the last time you let yourself fall freely and fully into desire? Are you ready to go all in?
4. Are you muting the voice of desire because you’re afraid of what it is asking of you?
5. Is it possible that God speaks to us in and through our desires? Is it possible that prayer doesn’t mean talking to God at all, but instead simply listening to our dreams?
6. How is your relationship with the desire to consume? Is it consuming you more than you’d like? More than you are willing to admit? Why not ask someone to help you stop? Very few of us can control unhealthy desires on our own.
7. What do you want to be remembered for? What do you long (desire) to leave behind?
8. When was the last time you showed your love that you enjoyed them, not just loved them?
9. Do you desire yourself – in the sense of loving yourself? In the sense of enjoying being with yourself?
10. Do you remember your childhood desire? (Did you promise yourself you’d never forget it?)
11. What’s your question? Is there another question about desire that’s niggling at you?

The link to the current and all past issues of On the Journey can always be found at cucmatters.org/p/journey-groups.htm

Loving Animal Nature

Rev. LoraKim Joyner

We can't save the world unless we love every part of it.

Unitarian Universalists have a First Principle, declaring our covenant to affirm and promote "the inherent worth and dignity of every person." Some change the ending to "all beings," so as to include nonhuman species as well. Either way, I often hear how the First Principle is a "slam dunk," -- that of course we see the worth and dignity of other individuals!

I think that perhaps cognitively we see other individuals' worth and dignity, but our behavior doesn't always match cognitive assent. Behavior is an embodied, effectual, and largely subconscious affair. Our actions, words, and thoughts are often at odds with our conscious affirmations, especially if we are under stress or our needs are not getting met.

Furthermore, we have been acculturated to fit into a society that "hierarchalizes" the “other” into subhuman or less worthy categories so that certain groups can exert power, domination, and control over economic resources. In other words, we have much work to do to actually treat all as if they had inherent worth and dignity.

Start with yourself: you have inherent worth and dignity. Yet how often do you find yourself thinking or behaving towards yourself uncharitably? Loving the remarkable, beautiful being that you are means loving all of your animality. You come to notice and love the animality of others, too. By animality I mean the sensing, feeling body responding to the world. The perfection of who we are is much more than the images of ourselves that our culture teaches us. By love I mean being open to the needs and feelings of others without judgment. This is empathy. "Observing without judging is the highest form of human intelligence" (J. Krishnamurti). Such empathy connects us deeply to life and nourishes us, others, and our relationships and goals.

All of us can grow in three intelligences: emotional intelligence, social intelligence, and multispecies intelligence. With these intelligences we consider how we, other humans, and other species are feeling and what we are needing. We can train ourselves to be more impartial, scientific observers by quieting our narrow loops of judgment, and instead translate everything into feelings and needs. The world needs us to do this inner work.

The inner work of accepting of all of who we are -- all that it means to be great apes who live and die imperfectly -- is necessary for the outer work to preserve and cherish life and well-being. Any part of ourselves that we seek to exile, or marginalize -- any part that we don't like about ourselves, that we label “wrong” or “not part of the whole” -- is a part we will also wish could be excised from others. This is the root judgmentalism upon which hierarchicalizing is built -- and the result is a society that exploits beings and extracts health from the environment for the privilege of a few.

We evolved to have a loving animal nature -- able to be fierce and protective when we need to be, but fundamentally seeking to be attuned intimately to and in relationship to life around us without judgment. By loving our animality, we open ever more greatly to the biology, needs, feelings, and subjective experience of all -- and we move towards co-liberation. Undoing certain of our enculturation's limits frees us as well as all beings.

Liberation must be co-liberation, and it will take intentional work: to learn to live without fear and die courageously; to embrace the reality that our animality is shared and interdependent with all life; to remove hierarchal evaluation of others. The rewards of this work are great. Through this work I have welcomed the many to a flourishing life, become aware of nature's returning embrace, felt my real belonging.

Journey Group Packet 2014 Nov: Forgiveness

Journey Group Packet
2014 Nov
Forgiveness

Meredith's Reflection

Love, Understanding, and Forgiveness

We need to receive forgiveness, and we need to give it. As Reinhold Niebuhr said, “No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own. Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.” (in our hymnal, #461)

We need to receive forgiveness because sometimes we find out that our actions, which seemed to us perfectly reasonable, perhaps even virtuous, have hurt someone. We need to forgive others for the same reason: because we aren’t as virtuous as we think we are.

When we care about maintaining relationship, that’s love – or, at least, the beginning of it. In our need for other people is the seed of love. Love, says Niebuhr, takes its final form in forgiveness: that willingness to put restoration of relationship above the calculus of punishment and justice – to put relationship above receiving our due.

Forgiveness depends crucially upon understanding. To illustrate, put yourself in this scenario:

You’ve been grocery shopping. Now you’ve gotta get the groceries home and put away. You’re under some time pressure because you have an appointment coming up. You get to your apartment building, but the parking places on that side of the street are taken, so you have to park across the street. At the grocery store, you had asked for paper rather than plastic, and what you’ve got are three brimming-full paper grocery bags. You decide you need to do this in one trip, so you scoop up all three bags. Your field of vision is now somewhat limited. You wait for the light to change. You know it says “walk” for only a few seconds before it goes into its warning blink, and that stopped cars are ready to proceed the instant the light changes back. You’re making your way across the street, when some clod walking by the other direction bumps into you. Your groceries spill in the middle of the street. Your body floods with that anger reaction. Blood pressure up, you see red. You spin around, clutching the one bag of groceries that didn’t spill, and the angry, loud words that are already starting to come out of your mouth are definitely not words you would want your children to hear. In that moment you see . . . the white cane. The anger just drains right away as you see the truth of the situation with clarity.

When the injured truly understands the offender -- where she was coming from and why she did what she did -- forgiveness naturally follows. Sometimes, though, a person can cling to grievance believing that they could (or do) completely understand the offender, and still find the offense unforgivable.

Forgiveness can happen without reconciliation. But when we find ourselves otherwise unable to forgive, working toward reconciliation – commitment to a process of restitution – can help.

Meredith’s Musings
Forgiveness
(from Communitarian, 2014 November)

On small matters, forgiveness can be a casual matter: as easy as saying the words, “I forgive you.” Some wounds go deeper, though, and the healing is not so easy. The road to forgiveness is sometimes harrowing, soul wrenching -- about the hardest thing a person can do.

Forgiving is fore-giving: giving what was before. To forgive is to give back the relationship as it was before. When the fabric of relationship is ripped through, restoration requires more than brief words of apology and forgiveness.

There are ways that forgiveness goes wrong. First, we might think it is done when it has only begun. Second, forgiveness goes wrong when the forgiver comes off as superior – magnanimous in being willing to forgive. Rather than return the parties to equality, it maintains a reversed inequality. That can happen when we don’t seek a more extended reconciliation process. Third, forgiveness goes wrong when it is expected or demanded. When we “should” ourselves or others into “forgiving,” the longer process that could lead to a deeper restoration is derailed. Forgiveness goes awry, for example, when a battered woman is told she “should forgive” her husband and take him back – without any reliable commitment on his part. Fourth, things have gone wrong when we give up on the possibility of forgiveness at all. This is the flip side of expecting or demanding it or treating it as if it were an easy and momentary thing to do. Once we see that forgiveness isn't simple and instantaneous, we might go the other direction and give up on it entirely. Don't demand it or expect it -- but please don't give up on forgiveness either.

The grace of forgiveness – the grace of being able to forgive, and the grace of coming to be forgiven – can, if not short-circuited, have a power to raise new life from a kind of death. It can break through the usual demands of retributive justice.

The first step is for the injured to be able to say that they’ve been hurt and how. Sometimes we aren’t ready to get, don’t want to get, don’t need to get, to forgiveness. Just the first step of speaking the pain helps prepare a person to get on with life. Second, having named our pain, grieve it. If we don’t grieve, we are much more likely to pass on the very same injury to others. Last comes letting it go -- which you can’t make yourself do, and you certainly can’t make anyone else let something go. You can only open yourself to inviting the release to come. Letting go – if it happens -- releases the transgressor from the punishment he would deserve for his violation.

“The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know,” as Blaise Pascal said. The path to forgiveness entails delving into the matters of the heart.

The Spiritual Exercise

The focus of this month’s exercise is self-forgiveness – which, in its fullest realization, includes outward changes and a new relationship to the world.

Consider this example, from the 1982 film Gandhi:

Violent rioting has broken out. Muslim and Hindu mobs are attacking and killing each other all over India. Gandhi goes on a hunger strike – refusing to eat until the violence stops. In the film, we see Gandhi weak and in bed from fasting. Leaders of the fighting factions come in, throw down their swords and promise they will fight no more. One man then pushes through and flings bread on Gandhi.

Man: Eat! I'm going to Hell! But not with your death on my soul.
Gandhi: Only God decides who goes to hell.
Man: I killed a child! I smashed his head against a wall.
Gandhi: Why?
Man: They killed my son. My boy. [Holds out his hand at waist level to indicate the boy’s height.] The Muslims killed my son!
Gandhi: I know a way out of Hell. Find a child, a child whose mother and father have been killed – a little boy about this high [holds out hand to indicate the same height the man had indicated] -- and raise him as your own. Only be sure that he is a Muslim and that you raise him as one.

The man is astounded. Then his stunned expression seems to turn from disbelief to wonder. He turns to go. Stops. Turns back to Gandhi. Gets on his knees and bows to the ground. (See video at the bottom of this post.)

This month’s exercise asks you to be creative and imagine – for in imagination we give ourselves the preparation for life. Write (in your journal or separately) a fictional scenario of a person who has done something horrible – as the man who confronted Gandhi had done. If you can, choose an act that you can imagine yourself having done (at an earlier stage in your life, perhaps, -- if circumstances had pushed you to it). Imagine her/his process of restitution (perhaps assigned by a wise woman or man, as in the above example, or perhaps otherwise determined). As your time for this exercise allows, go into detail about how the restitution and self-forgiveness process unfolds – its ups and downs. What does the self-forgiveness arrived at look and feel like? How is the person changed?

Bring your story to your journey group, prepared to share it – in whole or in synopsis.

Questions to Live With

As always, don’t treat these questions like “homework.” You do not need to engage every single one. Instead, simply look them over and find the one that “hooks” you most. Then let it take you on a ride. Live with it for a while. Allow it to regularly break into – and break open – your ordinary thoughts. And then come to your Journey Group meeting prepared to share that journey with your group.

1. When the person to whom we would like to apologize is unavailable (e.g., has died, or is unreachable) can we forgive ourselves? What does it take to release ourselves from guilt and recrimination?

2. When the person we would like to forgive is unavailable (has died, or is unreachable) what can we do?

3. What wrongs against you would you regard as “unforgivable” – no matter what sincere contrition and commitment to restitution the offender may demonstrate?

4. In what ways might praying for forgiveness be helpful and a good idea? 

5. Concerning self-forgiveness, Daniel Woo offers this meditation: “I am a human being who has made mistakes. I am not perfect. I forgive myself today. Today I will do my best, imperfectly. I am forgiven and I will love myself today. I am a good, worthy human being. The sun shines each day no matter what happened yesterday. I forgive myself for all my yesterdays. I have an inner light that shines on me today.” Do you think this sort of meditation would be helpful? Why or why not?

6 Is it appropriate for self-forgiveness to be more difficult than forgiving others? Why?

7. Forgiveness is in part about healing relationships. But what do we do when we do not have a willing partner in the healing process?

8. When we are wronged, it’s normal to be angry and hurt, to rehearse the narrative in our minds. We give over our personal power to the individual who hurt us, continuing to let their past actions dominate our present experience. In such a case, forgiveness is liberating, for in letting go of the grievance, it loses its power over us. What does it take to be able to forgive and let go in this way?

9. In the absence of an apology from the offender, the injured, in some cases, nevertheless forgives. So what is the role or importance of apology?

10. Can temporarily withholding forgiveness sometimes be a wise and caring choice? When?

11. What is the role or importance of group-to-group apology/forgiveness (e.g., the US apologizing for slavery). Is this importantly different from person-to-person apology/forgiveness?

12. Who do you need to forgive in your life?

13. From whom do you need to seek forgiveness?

 Wise Words

To err is human; to forgive, divine. -- Alexander Pope

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

If I say, 'I forgive you,' I have implicitly said you have done something wrong to me. But what forgiveness is at its heart is both saying that justice has been violated and not letting that violation count against the offender. -- Miroslav Volf

When I am able to resist the temptation to judge others, I can see them as teachers of forgiveness in my life, reminding me that I can only have peace of mind when I forgive rather than judge. -- Gerald Jampolsky

 The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. -- Mahatma Gandhi

 One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody everything everynight before you go to bed. -- Bernard Baruch

 Holding on to anger, resentment and hurt only gives you tense muscles, a headache and a sore jaw from clenching your teeth. Forgiveness gives you back the laughter and the lightness in your life. -- Joan Lunden

 I learned a long time ago that some people would rather die than forgive. It's a strange truth, but forgiveness is a painful and difficult process. It's not something that happens overnight. It's an evolution of the heart. -- Sue Monk Kidd

 It's not an easy journey, to get to a place where you forgive people. But it is such a powerful place, because it frees you. -- Tyler Perry

 How does one know if she has forgiven? You tend to feel sorrow over the circumstance instead of rage, you tend to feel sorry for the person rather than angry with him. You tend to have nothing left to say about it all. -- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

 You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well. -- Lewis B. Smedes

 The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget. -- Thomas Szasz

 It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. -- William Blake

 As we know, forgiveness of oneself is the hardest of all the forgivenesses. -- Joan Baez

 One important theme is the extent to which one can ever correct an error, especially outside any frame of religious forgiveness. All of us have done something we regret - how we manage to remove that from our conscience, or whether that's even possible, interested me. -- Ian McEwan

 Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them. -- Bruce Lee

 Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. -- Corrie Ten Boom

 Many promising reconciliations have broken down because while both parties come prepared to forgive, neither party come prepared to be forgiven. -- Charles Williams

 To confer dignity, forgive. To express contempt, forget. -- Mason Cooley When you are happy you can forgive a great deal. -- Princess Diana

 God forgive you, but I never can. -- Elizabeth I

 God will forgive me. It's his job. -- Heinrich Heine

 If I owe Smith ten dollars and God forgives me, that doesn't pay Smith. -- Robert Green Ingersoll 

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me. -- Emo Philips

From World Scripture

From the Quran:

Make allowances for people, command what is right, and turn away from the ignorant. (Surat Al-A‘raf, 199)

The repayment of a bad action is one equivalent to it. But if someone pardons and puts things right, his reward is with Allah. Certainly He does not love wrongdoers. (Surat Ash-Shura, 40)

It is a mercy from Allah that you were gentle with them. If you had been rough or hard of heart, they would have scattered from around you. So pardon them and ask forgiveness for them, and consult with them about the matter. Then when you have reached a firm decision, put your trust in Allah. Allah loves those who put their trust in Him. (Surah Al ‘Imran, 159)

Jesus’ Words on Forgiveness, from the Gospels (NRSV):

“So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.” (Matthew 5:23-24)

“For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew 6:14-15)

“Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” (Matthew 18: 21-22)

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” (Luke 6:37)

From Paul’s Epistles (NRSV):

“Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. (Colossians 3:13)

“Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” (Ephesians 4:31-32)

“But if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but to some extent—not to exaggerate it—to all of you. This punishment by the majority is enough for such a person; so now instead you should forgive and console him, so that he may not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. So I urge you to reaffirm your love for him.” (2 Corinthians 2:5-8)

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.” (1 Corinthians 13:4 – 6)

Perry's Family Page
by Perry Montrose, Director of Lifespan Religious Education and Faith Development

Children are often told, “Say you’re sorry.” The offended person is expected to accept the apology and “forgive.” Sometimes the words are meant sincerely and felt by the other person; sometimes they are not, but there is still the expectation to forget the offense. However, true forgiveness is an internal process that relates more to a shift in perspective than a relationship outcome. If we can help children accept human fallibility and process the hurt they have felt or witnessed in another person, then they develop a deeper emotional intelligence and life-changing tool.

The lesson on forgiveness in the Unitarian Universalist Religious Education curriculum Moral Tales, which the CUC fourth-grade class is using this year, begins by asking the children to think about acts of goodness that they and others have done. The children are then asked to name the virtues behind the acts, e.g., generosity, courage, honesty. Before they think about what it means to forgive themselves and others for hurts that have occurred, they need to be holding the sense of goodness that exists in all of us. In order to process hurts in a healthy way, we need to remember that goodness abounds and we hold virtues within us, despite our foibles.

The session then focuses on an old Middle-eastern story about two friends who travel together. The friend who is slapped by the other in an argument writes the hurt in sand and it is blown away by the winds of forgiveness. The same friend is then saved from drowning by the friend who had slapped him. He etches that act in stone and when asked about the difference replies, "When someone hurts us, we should write it down in sand where the winds of forgiveness can erase it away. This way our hearts are free from bitterness, and we can renew our friendships. But, when someone does something kind for us, we must engrave it in stone and in our hearts so that we will never forget.” 

The curriculum tells the children that

the act of forgiveness is one of the most important choices we can make. Forgiveness can help us keep our relationships with others. It can help us have hearts full of love rather than bitterness.

It is pointed out that the word forgiving is made up of “for” and “giving.”

Forgiveness means giving kindness, empathy, and love to another person, even if they have hurt us. When we are angry at ourselves and forgive ourselves, we are giving kindness, empathy, and love to ourselves.

It is stressed to the children that this does not mean we forget the hurtful act or excuse it. The interaction may still affect the choices we make, e.g., not lending a personal possession to someone who has destroyed one, but we make efforts to let go of the resentment.

Similarly, psychological studies on forgiveness have defined it as a

freely made choice to give up revenge, resentment, or harsh judgments toward a person who caused a hurt, and to strive to respond with generosity, compassion, and kindness toward that person. It is a process that involves reducing negative responses and increasing positive responses toward the person who caused the hurt, across the realms of affect, cognition, and behavior. Importantly, forgiveness is not condoning, excusing, denying, minimizing, or forgetting the wrong. It can occur without reconciliation, which requires the participation of both parties, if the person who caused the hurt is absent, deceased, or remains unsafe.

Forgiving is not forgetting, but it is changing our perspective toward the incident. The key is that forgiveness is an internal process that helps us shift how we feel and determines our relationship to ourselves, as well as others. It may or may not change the interaction with the person who caused the hurt or who we hurt, but it changes the way we move forward on our life paths. The studies have shown that this choice of forgiveness directly affects health outcomes and mortality rates.

In teaching our children what it means to forgive, we are empowering them with a tool that will positively affect their health and their ability to relate to the people around them. In helping children accept our human imperfections, we enable them to give understanding, empathy, and kindness to themselves and others. They are freed to act boldly in transformative ways because they have let go of burdensome resentments and unhealthy self-criticism. Learning the process of forgiveness is vital to personal well-being and the continuation of peace-making in the world.

Resources

Moral Tales, Session 5: Forgiveness http://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/children/tales/session5/index.shtml

Study on Forgiveness and Health Outcomes http://www.academia.edu/1007805/Forgive_to_Live_Forgiveness_Health_and_Longevity

The Forgiveness Toolbox: A skills-based toolbox enabling individuals and groups to transform the impact of harm and violence and nurture peaceful co-existence http://www.theforgivenesstoolbox.com/

Barbara Marshman, What If Nobody Forgave? A story about letting go of grudges. http://www.uua.org/worship/words/readings/5955.shtml

- - - -
Clip from "Gandhi" (1982):

The Value of Journey Groups

WHY THIS IS SO VERY IMPORTANT

"There is a quality of listening that is possible among a circle of human beings, who by their attentiveness to one another create a space in which each person is able to give voice to the truth of his or her life. There is the miracle of authentic narrative, made possible by listening that holds still long enough to let the truth be told. Where there is this kind of listening and speaking, a new kind of community is born -- a community of life."

- Rebecca Parker, Unitarian Universalist Theologian

"I pin my hopes to quiet processes and small circles, in which vital and transforming events take place."

- Rufus Jones, Quaker historian and theologian

Helping Each Other Become the People We Most Want to Be

Unitarian Universalism is about connection. We are a religion that sees people struggling, not against our own sinful souls, but against a shallow, frantic, and materialistic world that all-too-often leaves us disconnected from our deepest selves, life's gifts and needs greater than one's own. Therefore, it is our mission at CUC to "nurture each other in our spiritual journeys" and to "foster compassion and understanding." Journey Groups are the most direct and effective way to do this nurturing and fostering.

Through our mission, CUC works to heal that divide. We nurture each other in our spiritual journeys in order to find and create connection in an often very disconnecting world. We foster compassion and understanding in order to become people of depth and presence in a world often shallow and distracted.

Journey Groups offer

• Formative space and circles of learning, support, and challenge
• Opportunities for spiritual deepening and practice
• An intimate home within a larger church community

so that participants become the people they want to be.

Journey Groups are about becoming.

Formative Space

The core purpose of Journey Groups is to create formative space for individuals. This is a space of acceptance and safety in which group members can explore their deepest values and inner voice without judgment or coercion.

"So what do we do in a circle of trust? We speak our own truth; we listen receptively to the truth of others; we ask each other honest, open questions instead of giving counsel; and we offer each other the healing and empowering gifts of silence and laughter....Our purpose is not to teach anyone anything but to give the inner teacher a chance to teach us...."Formation" may be the best name for what happens in a circle of trust, because the word refers, historically, to soul-work done in a communal setting....In a circle of trust, formation flows from the belief that we are born with souls in perfect form. As time goes on, we are subject to powers of deformation, from within as well as without, that twist us into shapes quite different from the shape of the soul. But the soul never loses its original form, and never stops calling us back to our birthright integrity. In a circle of trust, the powers of deformation are held at bay long enough for the soul to emerge and speak its truth....In a circle of trust we can grow our selfhood like a plant -- from the potential within the seed of the soul, in ground made fertile by the quality of our relationships, toward the light of our own wholeness."

- Parker Palmer

A Theology of Connection

Journey Groups are the way we practice what Unitarian Universalist theology teaches. Our UU theology is complex, yet it can be boiled down to a single focus on healing spiritual disconnection. Our congregations gather to heal disconnection by nurturing each other in our spiritual journeys, fostering compassion and understanding within and beyond our congregations, and engaging in service to transform ourselves and our world. Journey Groups are the container in which we explore the meaning of this theology in our lives and support our journey toward deeper connection with ourselves, with others, and with the mystery of life.

1. Journey Groups Are Rooted in a Theology Focused on Spiritual Connection

Many us grew up in a Christian context galvanized around the idea of sin. The sin perspective sees a world of people struggling with the fact of a deep, fundamental flaw in their nature. Religious communities, on this perspective, function to offer forgiveness or purity.

We Unitarian Universalists see the world from a different perspective. We see a world of people struggling with spiritual disconnection. We see ourselves and many around us hungering to re-connect with self, others, and the wholeness of creation. Unitarian Universalism and UU congregations exist to help people with this struggle. This is what we are about: to heal spiritual disconnection by nurturing the spiritual journey, fostering compassion and understanding, and engaging in transformative service.

We are all struggling to find our ways home -- to what we care most deeply about and who we most want to be. So Journey Groups are not just "an evening of good discussion" or "an opportunity for intellectual stimulation" or even "a chance to meet new friends." Journey Groups are designed to be a path home.

2. Journey Groups Provide an Opportunity to Explore the Worship Themes in More Depth -- and Connect with the Congregation as a Whole

Journey Groups are not a "stand alone" program. Journey Groups are inextricably connected to the worship life of CUC by providing participants with a way to explore the worship theme of the month. Besides helping us go deeper, this also connects us to the wider congregational community. Bob or Sue might not be in your Journey Group, but since they are also dealing with the same theme, you have a point of connection that allows us feel part of the same journey -- and strike up a conversation a bit more easily.

Journey Groups are not sermon discussion groups. The goal of a Journey Group is not explore the sermons in more depth, but to explore the monthly theme in more depth. Having the sermons in the background enriches the experience, but sermons are not the focus. The focus is on the monthly questions and spiritual exercise, which provide a different kind of experience than worship offers.

3. Journey Groups Invite Us to Experience the Worship Theme, Not Just Talk About It

Unitarian Universalists want to do more than just read and talk about spiritual topics. Provocative readings are important. Thinking about and discussing a topic is important. But there is nothing like experiential learning.

Each Monthly Packet includes a spiritual exercise to engage prior to the meeting. If, for instance, the theme is "grace," we don't just read what theologians have to say about it -- we challenge ourselves to find a way to bring grace (a gift not expected, earned, or deserved) into another person's life. If the theme is "prayer," we don't just read theories and perspectives on prayer -- we challenge ourselves to find a new way to pray (or even try prayer for the first time). The spiritual exercises differ widely from month to month. Sometimes they are profound and involved. Other times, simple and playful. Sometimes members may report having "the most moving experience of my life." Other times, they come in and say, "I'm not sure that worked for me, but it did make me realize..." No matter what, we ask members to try they exercise. Whether you "enjoy" it or not, the experience has something to teach you about life and yourself.

Of course, spiritual exercises differ from spiritual practice. The monthly exercise cannot take the place of on-going, daily practices that center us. Rather, the monthly exercise supplements our practices and facilitates the path toward depth and meaning.

4. Journey Groups Offer Questions to Walk With, Not Walk Through

Traditional small groups use discussion questions to keep the discussion focused and structured. Journey Groups use the questions differently. We see the questions as tools for individual exploration. Instead of asking our groups to go through the questions one by one and discuss them, we give you the questions ahead of time and ask you to find the one or two questions that "hook" you -- that speak to you in some dramatic or challenging way. We ask you to "live with" or "walk with" that question for the few weeks leading up to the Journey Group meeting. Find the question that hooks you and let it take you on a ride. Members then arrive at the meeting, not with an answer to each of the questions on the list, but with a story about the one or two questions that spoke to them and led to deeper, personal learning.

5. Journey Groups Slowly Teach the Substance of Unitarian Universalism.

Each monthly theme brings attention to a spiritual value. The Monthly Packet and Journey Group meeting challenges you to ask, "What does it mean to live a life with this particular value front and center?" The values engaged in this way are ones that Unitarian Universalism has historically honored and emphasized. By growing into them, we grow into the distinctive substance of our faith tradition.

6. Journey Groups are the Essential Component of Theme-Based Ministry.

Theme-based ministry develops religious competence and the resources for coping calmly with life's uncertainty, crises, and loss. See the "Theme-Based Ministry" page: CLICK HERE.

Community

In Journey Groups we engage each other in a covenantal relationship. So we commit to honoring a particular format and clear relational commitments during meetings. These promises to each other provide meaning and connection. Over time, great depth of friendship emerges that may be called spiritual friendship.

Journey Group Packet 2014 Oct: Death

Journey Group Packet
2014 Oct
Death

Meredith's Reflection

Then We Will Know How to Live

“Threescore years and ten” is the Biblically allotted lifespan. Thus British poet, A. E. Housman, at the young age of 20, looked forward to an estimated 50 more years.

Now, of my three score years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

If we would celebrate the fullness of all of life, we will view with relief and gratitude that the separate identity that ego so ardently clings to does not have countless ages. What is ours to do is only this brief span: our three score years and ten, more or less. Mortality reminded Housman that we have only this moment. He chose, therefore, to walk about the woodlands, to be present to the beauty that is right now.

Remembering death, keeping it always in mind, makes us more present to life.

“Your life feels different on you, once you greet death and understand your heart's position. You wear your life like a garment from the mission bundle sale ever after—lightly because you realize you never paid nothing for it, cherishing because you know you won't ever come by such a bargain again.” (Louise Erdrich)

It is the very brevity of life that makes it full.

“What a puzzle it is that such brevity . . . makes the world so full, so good.” (Mary Oliver)

Therefore, the constant practice of the remembrance of death fills our days with life.

“If I had to live my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practice, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death, life is insipid.” (Dame Murial Spark)

We all know that all things are temporary, but we don’t act like we know it. We keep going after achievements and acquisitions as if we thought they and we were permanent. What would it be like live the truth of impermanence rather than merely know it?

Because all things are temporary, and constantly changing, then death is constantly occurring. The you that you were last year, or yesterday, or 5 minutes ago, has ceased to be: that person has died. The original Star Trek TV show in the 1960s introduced us to an imaginary technology called a "transporter beam." Supposedly, it takes your molecules apart and reassembles the molecules down on the planet surface. In essence, the transporter beam kills you and then re-creates you somewhere else. I mention this hypothetical Star Trek technology to call attention to a not-at-all-hypothetical fact of our lives. Through the technology of merely being alive, we are continually being killed and replaced by replicas of ourselves. At every moment, you are killed and replaced with a replica that has most of your memories, most of your skills and habits, looks mostly like you, etc. The replica is not exactly the same because all these aspects of you are, after all, constantly changing. To be alive is to change, and change means the death of what was.

Others have noticed this intricate linkage between life and death. They have experienced the liberation that comes with thoroughgoing awareness of death and impermanence. Grasping the fullness of death brings us to the fullness of life.

“If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.” (Martin Heidegger)

“Let us deprive death of its strangeness. Let us frequent it; let us get used to it; Let us have nothing more often in mind than death . . . We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom.” (Montaigne)

In that freedom that comes from constant awareness of death, we finally dissolve those boundaries we construct between self and “other.” Dwelling there we realize the beauty, wonder, and oneness of all things. By looking squarely at death and embracing it, we learn how to live.

“We know in our heads that we will die. But we have to know it in our hearts. We have to let this fact penetrate our bones. Then we will know how to live. To do that, we need to be able to look at the fact of death with steadiness. We can’t just glance at it casually.” (Larry Rosenberg)

“The best preparation is working with our state of mind now rather than thinking about exotic things we might do later when we are looking death in the eyes. It is better to learn to relate to death now, when we still have the strength and ability. In that way, when we face difficult circumstances, or at the time of death, we can rely on what we already know.” (Judith Lief)

I think it helps us "relate to death now," to keep in mind that life is constituted by death. Maybe the transporter beam called Time will reconstitute your pattern in the next moment, and maybe it won't. Either way, the being you experience as yourself this second is gone the next second. Why wrap so much anxiety around whether or not a very-nearly-identical replica will supersede you? Why have any anxiety whatsoever about that?

The Spiritual Exercise

Plan to take 30 minutes for this exercise. It’s a “guided contemplation.” Don’t rush it. Take your time and let each part really sink in.

Adapted from Judith Lief, Making Friends with Death (2001):

The practice of contemplating death should be done slowly and methodically. During the practice, when your mind wanders, gently bring it back to the topic at hand. Keep it simple and personal. All you need to do is go through the text step by step and reflect on what is said.

1. Sit quietly for 5 minutes, paying attention to the feeling of your breath going in and going out. (Recommended: set a timer for 5 minutes so you won’t have to be distracted by looking at a watch or clock.)

2. Say these words quietly three times: “Death is real. It comes without warning. No one escapes it. My body will soon be a corpse.”

3. Read the following 12 paragraphs, pausing after each one and and reflecting on it for a 2-3 minutes before moving on to read the next paragraph. Pay attention. Do not let your mind wander.

• Think of someone who has just died or is about to die. Notice how you feel. Notice the sorrow you feel to lose people you love, the relief you feel to lose someone you dislike or someone who has become a burden, and the indifference you feel to lose people you don’t know or care about.
• Think of your own death. It is certain that you, too, will die. Imagine that your death is right before you, as close as if a murderer were holding a knife at your throat or you were walking down the corridor to your own execution.
• Think of the friends you have lost already and those you will lose in the future, for you will lose them all. Think of all the possessions you have acquired so lovingly, for soon you will have none of them. Think of the projects you will never complete, the places you will never see, the answers you will never know.
• Think of your body and how it is aging, how it is prey to sickness and stress. Remember that you will lose your body one day, that it will become cold and stiff, a corpse to be buried or burned.
• Keep in mind that death comes to everyone. Rich or poor, famous or ordinary, wise or ignorant – every single living being faces death. Think of how hard all beings large and small struggle to live.
• Think of the frailty of all forms of life. The slightest mistake can end a life, and minute change in the environment can make whole species disapper. Think of the many close calls you have had in which only your good luck kept you alive and how your luck could easily turn.
• Think of how unpredictable death is. You do not know how long your life will be. You do not know in what manner you will die. And you do not know with whom you will be when you face your death, with friends or complete strangers.
• Think of the limited extent of your life and how quickly it will pass. Think of the many beings whose life spans are even shorter than yours, such as your pet dog or cat, or little insects who live less than a day. Think of the many lives lost in the time it takes to do this exercise.
• Now imagine that you are in your final decline and your death will occur within days. Think of what it must be like to know it is no longer a dream but reality. It is right in front of you.
• Now imagine that your death is not days away, but it is coming this very day, within hours. Sense it approaching you.
• Now let it come closer still, to the instant of drawing your last breath. Think of the shortness of that moment.
• Now sit quietly and feel each breath as it goes in and out. Feel the life of each breath, how vivid it is and how it dissolves into the space around you. Note the gap as one breath dies and the next has not yet come. Feel the incredible momentum of life, the rhythm of one breath after another, going in and out. Feel the way in which you contact your own death at every moment, with each breath you take. Rest in the immediacy and simplicity of that experience.

4. Say these words quietly three times: “Having contemplated the reality of death, may I face death fearlessly and help others through this difficult transition. May I participate fully in the ongoing dance of life and death. May I never forget the preciousness of life.”

Questions your facilitator may ask at your Journey Group: How did this exercise make you feel? Uncomfortable? Relieved? Scared? What ideas or images came up for you during the exercise? On your own, would you do this exercise again? Why or why not?

Questions to Live With

As always, don’t treat these questions like “homework.” You do not need to engage every single one. Instead, simply look them over and find the one that “hooks” you most. Then let it take you on a ride. Live with it for a while. Allow it to regularly break into – and break open – your ordinary thoughts. And then come to your Journey Group meeting prepared to share that journey with your group.

1. What is death?

2. What would it be like to live the truth of impermanence rather than merely know it?

3. Is death part of life or all of it?

4. Do you have a “bucket list” of things to do before you die? Is the list of things done once a meaningful measure of a life?

5. What would you do in your last day if you had 24 hours to live? In your last year if you had one year to live?

6. How old were you when the first person close to you died? How did that experience change you?

7. Review the 20 quotes included in this packet (8 in the opening reflection and 12 more in the “wise words”). Which of them do you most resonate with? Which seem wrong or particularly unhelpful?

8. On an average day, how aware of death are you? What difference would it make if you were daily less aware of it? More aware of it?

9. What do you wish you knew or better understood about death?

Recommended Resources

As always, this is not “required reading.” We will not analyze or dissect these pieces in our group. They are simply meant to get your thinking started – and maybe to open you to new ways of thinking about what it means to live with happiness and joy.

WISE WORDS
[See the 8 quotes included in the opening reflection]

What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms.
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.
― Steve Jobs

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
― Leonardo da Vinci

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
― Mark Twain

It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we're alive - to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.
― Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

The thought that you could die tomorrow frees you to appreciate your life now.
― Angelina Jolie

What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.
― Albert Pike

I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life.
― Jack Kerouac

I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.
― T. S. Eliot

None of us, in our culture of comfort, know how to prepare ourselves for dying, but that's what we should do every day. Every single day, we die a thousand deaths.
― Joni Eareckson Tada

You only live twice: Once when you're born -- and once when you look death in the face.
― Ian Fleming, You Only Live Twice

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.
― Dylan Thomas

BOOKS

Make of death a study. Only then will life become clear. A number of excellent books on death are well worth study.

Judith Lief, Making Friends with Death (2001)

Larry Rosenberg, Living in the Light of Death: On the Art of Being Truly Alive (2000).

Stephen Levine, Healing Into Life and Death (1987).

Ira Byock, Dying Well: The Prospect for Growth at the End of Life (1997)

Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie (1997). (See also: Morrie Schwartz, Letting Go: Morrie’s Reflections on Living While Dying (1996)).

Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (1973).

FILM

Departures (a Japanese film about a young man who studies the art of preparing the dead)
Cherry Blossoms (a German film about a man who mourns his wife in unique ways)
Defending Your Life (with Albert Brooks)
Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman)

Perry’s Family Page
by Perry Montrose, Director of Lifespan Religious Education and Faith Development

Talking about Death with Children and Youth

Wherever there is life, there is death. As great observers of their environment, children notice death in the world around them and they attempt to grasp what it is about. Depending upon their developmental age, children and youth consider the issue of death in very different ways, about the permanency of it, their personal relationship to it, and what it means.

Like many other sensitive topics, children and youth will be exposed to death and thinking about it, whether parents talk about it directly or not. Adults’ openness to discussing the topic gives the opportunity to know children’s feelings, be an active guide in negotiating the difficulties surrounding the issue, and provide a safe place for children to process their questions. Children often have thoughts and questions that are different than we may expect. Therefore, it is most important to let the children guide the conversation and say what is on their minds. If there is an open door to conversation, children will ask questions and share what they are thinking so adults can meet them where they are. The concern a child has may be different than the concern you have for them or think they may have. As adults, the greatest gift we can present to children is a listening ear to their processing and a trusted space in which to express thoughts and feelings.

Questions and thoughts about death may come up from seeing the cycle of life in nature, a dead animal outside, or a character on a television show. When a child loses a pet the reality of death enters life on a different level. This becomes further palpable when a person in their life passes away. The loss of a family member or friend brings the issue into the moment and includes their own process of grieving, in addition to the need for understanding. This can be a difficult situation for parents and adults who feel a deep need to protect children and make their world a safe comfortable place. Even during these difficult times, it is most important to be a listening presence and discover where the child is with the process of understanding and grief.

Like adults, children can have an array of feelings when losing someone they care about - sadness, emptiness, confusion, pain, anger. There is not one answer on what the right thing is to say or what an individual child might be thinking. The death of someone in children’s lives can bring worry about their own mortality and fear about losing other people significant to them. It is most important to create a feeling of safety and assurance about their own well-being and their loved ones being there for them. It is also all right if children do not want to talk about their feelings right away. It is most important to simply continue to listen for their comments and questions that may come later when they are ready.

Whether a general conversation arises or a specific situation related to death, there are many resources to support parents in talking to their children. Here are just some of what is available:

The hospice website has some very good material on how to talk to children about death, including specific phrases to use and an explanation of developmental differences:
http://www.hospicenet.org/html/talking.html

Earl A. Grollman, Talking about Death: A Dialogue between Parent and Child.
A UUA resource on talking to your children.
http://www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=3145

Pat Schwiebert, Tear Soup.
A wonderful story about grieving and our connection to one another.
http://www.amazon.com/Tear-Soup-Recipe-Healing-After/dp/0961519762

Leo Buscaglia, The Fall of Freddy the Leaf.
A beautiful lifecycle story that UU families have found coincides with their views on death.
http://www.amazon.com/Fall-Freddie-Leaf-Story-Life/dp/0943432898/

Two books that talk about death in the context of pets are:
Betsy Hill Williams, Jane Rzepka, Ken Sawyer, Noreen Kimball, About Death: A Unitarian Universalist Book for Kids.
http://www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=3632
Judith Viorst, The Tenth Good Thing About Barney.
http://www.amazon.com/Tenth-Good-Thing-About-Barney/dp/0689712030

Some parents have found these books helpful and beautiful to share with their children:
Brian Mellonie, Lifetimes: The Beautiful Way to Explain Death to Children.
http://www.amazon.com/Lifetimes-Beautiful-Explain-Death-Children/dp/0553344021
Warren Hanson, The Next Place.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0931674328/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=

Pat Thomas, I Miss You: A First Look at Death.
May be helpful for younger children.
http://www.amazon.com/Miss-You-First-Death-Books/dp/0764117645/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

Laurie Krasny Brown, When Dinosaurs Die: A Guide to Understanding Death.
A comprehensive but accessible for children in presenting all of the facets of coping with death.
http://www.amazon.com/When-Dinosaurs-Die-Understanding-Families/dp/0316119555/

Jacques Taravant, The Little Wing Giver.
Explains how angels got their wings and does not directly address death, but some UU families have found it spiritually nurturing and a lead-in to questions about heaven, God, etc.
http://www.amazon.com/little-wing-giver-Jacques-Taravant/dp/0439453607/

Who's In What Journey Group?

Journey Group A
2nd Sundays, after service, CUC, room 12
Facilitator: Karen Perkins Dandridge
Ann Norum
Norm Handelman
Alan Marrasco
Debbie Mawhinney
Joan Eskenazi
Giny Strand
Melody Cooper
Karen Dreher
Ted Dreher
Adine Usher
Donna Vought
Elizabeth Tashiro
Precious Sellars

Journey Group B
2nd Fridays, 11:00am
Home of Maxi Feldman & Bryan Masback
Harrison, NY 10528
Facilitator: Maxi Feldman
Anne Majsak
Paula Meigan
Carla Fisher
Mary L Cobb
Sophie Mitra

Journey Group C
3rd Mondays, 7:30pm
Home of Al & Robin Rocchi
Harrison, NY 10528
Facilitator: Al Rocchi
Robin Rocchi
Bryan Masback
Sara Caldwell
Robert Marrone
Ted Kuczinski
Claire Kuczinski
Fletcher Crossman
Anne Marie Damashek
Scott Damashek
Yvonne Lynn
Miram Innes

Journey Group D
4th Tuesdays, 10:30am
Home of Lauren Taylor
Scarsdale, NY 10583
Facilitator: Lauren Taylor
Joan Traber
Barbara Youngman
Janet Giewat
Mary Donch
Anne Addler
Cynthia Roberts
Phyllis Wilson

Journey Group E
3rd Tuesdays, 7:30pm
Home of Nicky Klemens
Rye, NY 10580
Facilitator: Nicky Klemens
Karen Schmitt
Carol Selinske
Creighton Cray
Julie Gans
Kate Breault
Chris Breault
Margaret Gold
Niamh Thurman
Joni Ehrlich

Journey Group F
3rd Thursdays, 7:30pm,
Home of Barry and Trish Litcofsky
Irvington, NY 10533
Co-Facilitators: Trish Litcofsky & Perry Montrose
Dean Silverberg
Janice Silverberg
Jim Cobb
Lenore Lupie
Karen Schatzel
Tori Weisel
Barry Litcofsky
Charlie McNally

Journey Group G
3rd Thursdays, 7:30pm
Home of Becky Kurth and Randy Marshall
New Rochelle, NY 10804
Facilitator: Becky Kurth
Danielle O'Malley
Diana Echevarria
Janet Press
Bob Indra
Randy Marshall
Pearl Prince
Julie Bondor
Laura Sehdeva
Hope Tera
Laura Goodspeed
Russ Newberry

Journey Group H
3rd Sundays, after service, CUC room 12
Facilitator: Cynthia Heller
Catherine Kortland
Chris Kortland
Carole Mehta
Johanna Bauer
Mary Cavallero
Edith Kates
Barbara Mair
Daniel Tillman
Cynthia Tillman
Janet Wafer
Ann Byers
John Steele
Ellen Freiberger

Journey Group I
3rd Sundays, 5:00pm
Home of Jane Dixon
White Plains, NY 10605
Facilitator: Jane Dixon
Ingrid Hartmann
Jacy Good
Pinar Tanrikorur
Gail McCleod
Bevin Maguire
Craig Hunt
Bobbi Collins
Michael Stelling
Lisa Stelling
Valerie Kirschenbaum

Journey Group M
4th Sundays, after service, CUC room 12
Facilitator: Jeff Tomlinson
Linda Janczewski
Allan Janczewski
Ben Unger
Kelly Murphy Mason
Pam Cucinell
Steve Bear
Janet Bear
Barbara Dodd
Judy Gershon
Roxanne Seitz
Emily Barry-Murphy

Journey Group N
2nd Sundays, after service, CUC room TBA
Facilitator: Deb Morra
Joann Prinzivalli
Trudy Katz
Elizabeth Tashiro
Polly Midgley
Liz Laite
John Schwam
Tara James
Betty Landauer
Rae Messing
Katie Alexander
Barbra Kelly
Irene Cox

Journey Group Packet 2014 Sep: Faith

Journey Group Packet
2014 Sep
Faith

Meredith's Reflection

faith (n.) mid-13th-century; "duty of fulfilling one's trust," from Old French feid, foi "faith, belief, trust, confidence, pledge," from Latin fides "trust, faith, confidence, reliance, credence, belief," from root of fidere "to trust," from Proto-Indo-European root bheidh (source also of Greek pistis). Theological sense is from late 14th-century; religions called faiths since circa 1300.
-from Online Etymoligical Dictionary

Some us have a warm, fuzzy response to the word “faith.” Others of us have a cold, prickly reaction to the word. I understand the cold, prickly reaction. Far from its original sense of “fidelity; fulfillment of duties with which one has been entrusted,” “faith” today has sometimes seemed to mean “clinging to a belief regardless of the evidence – regardless, even, of any possible future evidence.” If that’s what “faith” means, it’s no wonder that many Unitarian Universalists would rather have nothing to do with it.

If we are to have fidelity to the truth, we understand that we must always be willing to change our belief in light of new evidence. To define “faith” as “refusal to modify beliefs, whatever the evidence” is to make faith into the opposite of the fidelity that “faith” originally indicated!

The Greek word was pistis. Indeed, in Greek mythology, the goddess Pistis personified trust and reliability. In Roman mythology, her name was Fides (hence, fidelity). The Greeks often spoke of Pistis together with Elpis (hope), Sophrosyne (prudence), and the Charites (a.k.a. Graces, which variously included such minor goddesses as charm, beauty, fertility, creativity, splendor, mirth, and good cheer – all attributes generally associated with harmony among people.) When Paul of Tarsus wrote to the Corinthians that “faith, hope, and love abide,” he was clearly evoking this Greek background.

For the Greeks, Pistis evolved to include persuasion. In the Greek understanding of rhetoric, pistis are the elements to induce true judgment. So the idea of fidelity to duty morphed to refer especially to fidelity to the truth, and the logical means of persuasion of the truth.

In the hands of the writers and the interpretive community of readers of the Christian ("New") Testament, the Greek pistis evolved further from “persuasion” to “conviction.”

The Christian Testament was originally written in Greek, and pistis (uniformly translated to English as “faith”) appears many times. Below is a sampling. As you look over these passages, I invite you to consider what difference it makes if you read faith as “fidelity to an entrusted duty” or as “conviction of belief.”

• “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” (1 Cor 13:13)
• "So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord— for we walk by faith, not by sight." (2 Cor 5:7)
• “Since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith.” (Rom 3:30)
• “In it [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘The one who is righteous will live by faith.’” (Rom 1:17)
• “For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith.” (Rom 4:13)
• “For through the spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. . . . Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love.” (Gal 5:5)
• “for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints” (Col 1:4)
• “But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.” (1 Thess 5:8)
• “When Jesus heard him, he was amazed and said to those who followed him, ‘Truly I tell you, in no one[a] in Israel have I found such faith.’ (Matt 8:10)
• “And just then some people were carrying a paralyzed man lying on a bed. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.’” (Matt 9:2)
• “Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, ‘Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.’” (Matt 9:22)
• “Then he touched their eyes and said, ‘According to your faith let it be done to you.’” (Matt 9:29)
• “Then Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.” (Matt 15:28)
• “He said to them, ‘Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.’” (Matt 17:20)
• “Jesus answered them, ‘Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only will you do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, “Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,” it will be done.’” (Matt 21:21)
• “’Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.’” (Matt 23:23)
• “He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’” (Mark 4:40)
• “Then Peter remembered and said to him, ‘Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.’ Jesus answered them, ‘Have faith in God.’” (Mark 11:21-22)
• “When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, he said, ‘I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.’” (Luke 7:9)
• “And he woke up and rebuked the wind and the raging waves; they ceased, and there was a calm. He said to them, ‘Where is your faith?’ They were afraid and amazed, and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?’ (Luke 8:24-25)
• “The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’” (Luke 17:5)
• “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8)
• “I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail.” (Luke 22:32)
• “Peter…addressed the people, ‘…And by faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you.’” (Acts 3:16)
• “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Heb 11:1)

All these meanings – fidelity, persuasion, and conviction – echo through our conception of faith today. What is at the core, unifying these disparate meanings?

Jumping from the ancient Greeks and the Christian Testament writers to today: recent reflections on the nature of faith provide important avenues for getting at the core of faith while discarding the association of faith with willful disregard of evidence and reason. Let’s take a look at three contemporary approaches.

1. Wieman

The Unitarian theologian Henry Nelson Wieman (1884-1975) provides helpful guidance on the nature of faith. Wieman’s view, as described by Virginia Knowles:

“Religious faith is the act by which we commit ourselves with the fullness of our being, insofar as we are able, to whatever can transform and save us from the evil of devoting ourselves to the transient goods of social success, financial opulence, or even scholarship or beauty or social concern.” (1992)

We all have egos, and our egos desire recognizable achievement -- socially, financially, physically, professionally, politically, or artistically. Our egos motivate us to do some good work, but Weiman identifies excessive devotion to the ego’s desires as evil. We may be saved from that evil, suggests Weiman, through commitment to grow and change in ways that make us increasingly better able to avoid the evil of overly focusing on the ego’s desires, increasingly oriented toward humble service of enduring values rather than ego desires and inconspicuous harmony with life and our world rather than recognition of achievement.

Wieman’s understanding of faith captures what has been most central and important about faith in Western religious traditions. The outcome of faith – personal transformation and transcendence of ego-centric desires -- is precisely the outcome that the traditional Western religions have seen as the product of a faithful life. Wieman has showed us a way to embrace this valuable function of faith without the unfortunate notion that faith requires irrational conviction that flies in the face of evidence. Try reading the above samples from the Bible with Wieman’s understanding of faith in mind. Does it work?

2. Salzberg

For American Buddhist writer Sharon Salzberg (b. 1952), faith is

"the act of opening our hearts to the unknown."

Rather than believing without evidence, faith is a willingness to go forward to take in new evidence and new experience, ever-willing to be transformed. This throwing ourselves into the unknown often does feel like leaping -- hence the phrase, "leap of faith."

At the same time, Salzberg is drawing upon the tradition that faith stands in distinction from reason and evidence. After all, reason and evidence tell us about what we can know. Making our peace with unknowability is also a crucial part of a whole life.

While Weiman draws attention to the ego’s focus on achievement, Salzberg’s formulation points to another trick of the ego. The ego pretends to know more than it actually does know about what's going to happen next and about where your life is headed. Ego loves its illusion of being in control. Our conceptions of how things are “supposed” to go can close us to realities that present themselves. Faith is the liberating capacity to step out of our illusion, and, without pretending already to know, be open to surprise and mystery.

Following Salzberg, we can see that faith means engaged and open-minded and open-hearted participation in life. It means the courage to offer up all that we are to the world around us, not knowing what the world will ask or what we will find in ourselves to offer. Faith is the overcoming of the fear that could cause us to withdraw and stand safely on the sidelines. Faith is jumping in -- there's the leap again -- into all that life has to offer, the joy and the triumph and the grief and the loss. Faith is stepping, jumping, skipping, leaping, somersaulting right into the middle of possibilities for how we might evolve and for what goodness might burst forth. Faith's opposite, then, is not doubt, but despairing withdrawal.

This understanding leads to seeing faith as also awareness of an interconnected universe. We are not alone no matter how alone we sometimes feel. What happens to us and from us is part of the larger fabric of life, always rippling out through threads of connection.

If we read the above Bible samples with Salzberg’s understanding of faith in mind, do they may more sense? Less?

3. Fowler

James Fowler (b. 1940, Prof of Theology and Human Development at Emory and a United Methodist minister) defined faith as:

“a way of knowing, construing, and interpreting existence.”

A “religion,” then, for Fowler, is “a community’s way of giving expression to faith relationships held in common.”

Fowler’s definition preserves our very common sense that Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, etc. are faiths (or, more specifically, are names of communities that give expression to faith relationships held in common among the community’s members). Each offers a certain way of knowing, construing, and interpreting existence.

The idea that it’s a good thing to have convictions that are entirely unshakeable regardless of the evidence is a bad mistake. That idea does nevertheless convey, for all its misdirection, one implication that is true: evidence is not the same thing as meaning, and evidence alone does not suffice. The way we understand the world is more than just evidence. Fowler’s definition preserves that nugget of insight about faith: that evidence alone doesn’t offer much guidance. Mere phenomena present us with “a blooming, buzzing confusion” (William James) until interpreted, fit into an overall context, made sense of.

There are many various ways to put the same evidence together into a structure of value and meaning, and each way is, for Fowler, a faith. We all have faith – it’s unavoidable – since we all interpret and make sense of existence. To have “little faith,” then, would be to have a rather haphazard and often incoherent way “knowing, construing, and interpreting existence.” To have a lot of faith would be to know, construe, and interpret existence in a way that coherently makes sense of a vast range of data. How does it work to read the above Bible verses with Fowler’s definition in mind?

Weiman, Salzberg, and Fowler each offer us an active conception of faith. It’s the act by which we commit (Weiman), the act of opening (Salzberg), and a way of doing something, namely, interpreting existence (Fowler). Faith is best understood not so much as something we have, but as something we do – or, sometimes, fail to do.

The Spiritual Exercise

For this exercise, we will consider faith in its aspect of trust. For the Western religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), faith involves trust in God. The core idea is that we don’t have to take responsibility for everything. How things turn out is, of course, an interactive mixture of what we do and what is beyond our control. Yet sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking we control what we do not. One of our “secret” strategies for control involves “shoulding.” I try to ensure that other people – or even inanimate objects – will behave in the way I want by clinging tightly to a belief that they should behave that way. Thus, when somebody (maybe me) fails to be and do as they should, and the result is that things don’t turn out as I want, I get upset. Trust (whether in God, or in society, or in the universe) involves letting go of trying to control everything – including letting go of shoulding. There are two levels.

Level A: Trusting that things will work out the way I want them to
Level B: Trusting that things will work out in a way that is really and deeply OK even if it’s very different from what I would have wanted.

“Level B,” of course, gets more to the essence of faith – which reminds us that acceptance as well as trust are central aspects of faith.

Your exercise, then, is:

For one week try letting go of something that you normally spend energy “shoulding” about or otherwise trying to control. Just let go of worrying and meddling with it. Have faith that it will turn out OK (even if it isn’t what you would have thought you’d want). NOTE: Do exercise reasonable prudence in selecting something to let go of. Stepping back and trusting your toddler to make it across a busy street by himself would probably not be a good choice.

Come to your Journey Group prepared to talk about how the exercise went.

Questions to Live With

As always, don’t treat these questions like “homework.” You do not need to engage every single one. Instead, simply look them over and find the one that “hooks” you most. Then let it take you on a ride. Live with it for a while. Allow it to regularly break into – and break open – your ordinary thoughts. And then come to your Journey Group meeting prepared to share that journey with your group.

1. How would it change your life if you had more faith? Less faith?

2. “Bad faith” is a term in existentialist philosophy. It means: refusal to confront facts or choices. What, if anything, does this tell you about what faith is?

3. What did faith mean to you when you were 7-years-old? When you were 14-years-old? What was your faith then? In what ways is that still a part of you today?

4. For Fowler, a religion is “a community’s way of giving expression to faith relationships held in common.” What are the faith relationships that Unitarian Universalists hold in common?

5. Have you ever had a “crisis of faith”? Are you still having it? How did it change you?

6. What is faith? How does living with faith enrich one’s life?

7. Some forms of Christianity teach that faith is always a gift from God and never something that can be produced by people. How much control, if any, do you think we have over whether or not we have faith? Can you choose faith – or does faith choose you?

8. Which approach – Weiman’s, Salzberg’s, Fowler’s – makes most sense to you? Or does combining all three seem attractive to you?

9. What value, if any, do you see in strong conviction? What value, if any, do you see in doubt?

11. Is it good for a society for its members to be diverse in their faiths?

12. A few years ago UUA produced postcards that UU congregations could buy and use for mailing to visitors. The postcard had a nice picture of a diverse and smiling group and the words: “Imagine a place where people of different beliefs worship together as one faith.” Is it a good way to express what UU is all about?

13. People have different concepts of what faith means. How much does having different concepts of faith interfere with finding “Common Ground”?

14. What are the differences between faith and hope? What are the intersections between faith and hope?

Recommended Resources

As always, this is not “required reading.” We will not analyze or dissect these pieces in our group. They are simply meant to get your thinking started – and maybe to open you to new ways of thinking about what it means to live with happiness and joy.

WISE WORDS

“Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.”-Rabindranath Tagore

“There are many things that are essential to arriving at true peace of mind, and one of the most important is faith, which cannot be acquired without prayer.” -John Wooden

“Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.” -Helen Keller

“A man of courage is also full of faith.” -Marcus Tullius Cicero

“We are twice armed if we fight with faith.” -Plato

“If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.” -Mahatma Gandhi

“To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.” -Alan Watts

“Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.” -Khalil Gibran

“The keys to patience are acceptance and faith. Accept things as they are, and look realistically at the world around you. Have faith in yourself and in the direction you have chosen.” -Ralph Marston

“All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.” -J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“Faith is not the belief that God will do what you want. It is the belief that God will do what is right.” -Max Lucado

“Sometimes beautiful things come into our lives out of nowhere. We can't always understand them, but we have to trust in them. I know you want to question everything, but sometimes it pays to just have a little faith.” -Lauren Kate, Torment

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.” -Mahatma Gandhi

“None of us knows what might happen even the next minute, yet still we go forward. Because we trust. Because we have Faith.” -Paulo Coelho, Brida

There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.” -Nelson Mandela

“A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.” -Friedrich Nietzsche

“Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.” -Rainer Maria Rilke,

“Doubt everything. Find your own light.” -Buddha

“Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be a prudent insurance policy.” -Elizabeth Gilbert

“Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.” -Mitch Albom,

“You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.” -Thomas Merton

“When you get to the end of all the light you know and it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.” -Edward Teller

“This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek.” -Terry Tempest Williams

“Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.” -Paul Tillich

“Faith is not something to grasp, it is a state to grow into.” -Mahatma Gandhi

“When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh.” -Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“You have as much laughter as you have faith.” -Martin Luther

“There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.” -Alfred Tennyson

“To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.” -Christopher Hitchens

“Life is doubt, and faith without doubt is nothing but death.” -Miguel de Unamuno

“A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.” -Arthur C. Clarke

ONLINE ARTICLES, VIDEOS OR PODCASTS

Google “Fowler Stages of Faith” and peruse a few of the top returns.

Sharon Salzberg, “Faith” http://www.sharonsalzberg.com/archive/article/142

Blogger Dan Fincke’s post on “Why I Define Faith Philosophically as Inherently Irrational and Immoral”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/camelswithhammers/2013/04/why-i-define-faith-philosophically-as-inherently-irrational-and-immoral/

Dangerous Faith? Faith vs. Reason on Responding to Climate Change
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/opinion/sunday/secular-climate-change-activists-can-learn-from-evangelical-christians.html

Audio: 3-minute audiobook excerpt from Salzberg’s Faith. http://www.sharonsalzberg.com/books-audio/78

BOOKS

Sharon Salzberg, Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience (2003). Faith resides not in the outcome, but in the willingness to see the possibility for change.

James Fowler, Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning (1981). Faith develops through life. Few ever reach the sixth and last stage. Many never progress pass the 3rd or 4th stage.

Chris Stedman, Faitheist: How and Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious (2012). The story of a former Evangelical Christian turned openly gay atheist who now works to bridge the divide between atheists and the religious.

Eboo Patel, Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim in the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation (2010). A hopeful and moving testament to the world-changing potential of an interfaith youth movement.

FILM

“Raw Faith” (2010) “an intimate and revealing documentary that follows two years in the private life of Marilyn Sewell, a Unitarian minister." Trailer and other info:
http://www.marilynsewell.com/raw-faith-film/

“Dead Man Walking” (1995)
“The Virgin Spring” (1960)
“The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988)
“The Ruling Class” (1972)

Short Films on Youtube (about 6 mins each):

“Faith”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-QJYS9Vg7c

“Leap of Faith”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bhymyUDEr8

What’s the connection between faith and . . . animal resuce? Check out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btiDHCuWyBA

Neil deGrass Tyson says faith and reason are irreconcilable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy5yWdVHv3o

SONGS ON YOUTUBE

George Michael, “Faith”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu3VTngm1F0